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A major new gallery dedicated to Van Gogh has opened this week in Arles, in the south of France.

The city has strong connections with the post-impressionist artist. Van Gogh lived in Arles for 15 months, and it was a time of voracious artistic productivity. Inspired by the colours and the landscapes of Provence, he produced around 200 paintings.

Yet not one of them remains here. Visitors can take guided tours of the places that have appeared in his paintings, but there has been little in the way of a home dedicated to the artist's heritage, until now.

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The Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles is an important showcase for Van Gogh's legacy, celebrating his influence on artists in the 20th and 21st centuries, and highlighting his links with the city. It will exhibit a dynamic collection of artworks - a collection which begun life in the 1980s - made in tribute to Van Gogh by some of the most exciting modern and contemporary artists, and curated by major art-world player Bice Curiger, the former editorial director of Tate Etc who curated the 2011 Venice Biennale. Her inaugural exhibition, Van Gogh Live!, includes works by Elizabeth Peyton, Gary Hume and Thomas Hirschhorn.

The gallery is housed in the Hôtel Léautaud de Donines, a 15th-century manor house restored and extended with a striking contemporary addition and interior space by Fluor architects, in the medieval quarter of Méjan.

On the edge of the quarter was the yellow house (no longer standing; the painting of the same name is in the Amsterdam museum) where Van Gogh lived - for a time with fellow artist Paul Gauguin. It was a prolific yet turbulent time. Though they inspired each other, they also argued, with such passion that it led to Van Gogh famously cutting off his left earlobe. And Arles was where he was incarcerated in the hospital - also immortalised in paintings - towards the end of his life.

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The force behind the new foundation is Swiss philanthropist and conservationist Luc Hoffmann (who founded the WWF) and his daughter Maja, an art collector, whose LUMA foundation, also in Arles, is dedicated to contemporary art. Her plans for the city's art credentials don't stop there: construction has already begun on an entire art complex, the Parc des Ateliers, with studios and gallery spaces housed in former railway buildings and a new building by Frank Gehry in the planning, set to open in 2018.